I've been keeping an eye on MC, seems pretty interesting. When it was announced free on XB1 and people turned their noses up, I was amused, it's basically been an Early Access game, its full release date for PC is June 1st.

Been having a second playthrough of enemy unknown/within since I got it on ipad. Forgot how good it was, the added content from enemy within works well and the whole package suits the ipad pretty well (apart from a couple of double-taps leading to unexpected actions).

What would really improve upon the first is a greatly expanded home base and related mechanics. If it's just, well, more of the same with different aliens to fight I'm not going to be into a day one purchase.

A story that branches from EU/EW - XCOM were outgunned so went underground, the Aliens took over, now XCOM are fighting back.

Because of this, it's stealth and guerrilla tactics. Missions often begin with you getting into position via stealth, instead of you finding the Aliens unprepared.

Research and develowmt is conducted through the scavenging of loot, which has to be collected from bodies by your troops. A bit like Meld in EW, this forces you to go out of your way to collect stuff, a bit risk/reward.

There are more objectives than just 'kill every alien' and some missions will have multiple objectives, allowing you to chose how to approach them.

Maps are procedulary generated - not random, but tiles with have specific possibilities as be shuffled so each mission is slightly different this time, fewer repeat maps.

The snake aliens can poison you, drag you out of cover, and constrict your guys.

One class gets a sword, damn yeah.

It's PC only so far because they want to push the procedural gen stuff and felt like consoles held this back. Also they are promising out the gate mod support, another reason to make it primarily PC only. No idea of that's for good, or just times.

IGN are covering it all week, kinda annoyed they won't just dump it all now, but I guess it's better than nothing.

Whilst I liked the last one, what killed it for me was the endless loading screens after each mission. If I have to stare at the back of a shuttle craft one more time...honestly, its was worse than even Destiny's 'in orbit' screen.